


Introspection

by marietcaelum



Category: Prometheus (2012)
Genre: Artificial Intelligence, Character Study, Gen, Philosophy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-11
Updated: 2016-05-11
Packaged: 2018-06-07 04:42:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6785692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marietcaelum/pseuds/marietcaelum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Knowledge = Power<br/>Power = Energy<br/>Energy = Mass<br/>The more you learn, the more you <em>grow</em>.<br/>(Or: Philosophers are likely terrible role models for a developing AI, but great for self-perception in general)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Introspection

**Author's Note:**

  * For [KiraWonrey (ArsitRouke)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArsitRouke/gifts).



There's a saying: a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. It's used on the whole by the smug, who would like to imply that  _they_ have the far greater knowledge. What they fail to realise, however, is that all knowledge is dangerous. The threat only increases the more one knows; it's who's endangered by the knowledge which changes with quantity. 

David has two years in which to gather knowledge. Two years of complete solitude, of unsupervised learning. Languages take up the greater part of that time, but with the study of language comes comprehension. The concepts a language covers need to be understood every bit as much as the words and characters themselves. It means nothing to understand that a symbol means 'tree' if one has never seen anything which links to the idea. The same applies to many of the more esoteric concepts.

David's brain is silicon and circuitry, hard-wired for mathematics on a scale that rivals the human brain, with the addendum that David's mind  _knows_ it's doing the calculations. By the time a human brain has finished calculating momentum and angle, the hand has already moved to catch the ball.

Where mathematics and language meet, philosophy is found. It is closer to maths than many would imagine. At its very core, philosophy is the process of attempting to understand the Universe through reason, to reduce it down to rationality and nothing more. This is something that David can understand; he learns _a priori analytic_ and _a posteriori synthetic_ , reason and evidence, and thinks that he can use this. This framework, this way to parse the Universe, he can incorporate it into his own method.

It's... related to his task, near enough. Justifiably so, arguably so. If he is ever challenged, he will be able to explain at least. Many of these languages, when they begin to speak of the beings they are searching for, move from solid and absolute concepts to less commonplace ideas, reminiscent of religious awe. David has never been provided with such a framework, never imbued with any sense of the divine, and without it he cannot understand. Comprehension and context are essential to parsing the languages he is researching, and he refuses to have less than native fluency when they arrive; he _must_ be of use. There are people relying on whim, who will have to _value_ him and his assistance; he will not ruin it with failure.

It’s in the process of seeking this understanding, in looking to _get_ the concept of absolute power that the cultures he’s researching seem to have tagged the beings with, that he comes across Descartes. He… has some trouble with him. He does not agree with or understand many of the claims the philosopher makes, cannot shake protocol ( _observe, incorporate, predict_ ) enough to think as he does. However, there is one proposition that speaks to him in terms of pure logic.

 _“Je pense, donc je suis.”_ More commonly, “ _cogito, ergo sum_ ” _._

I think, therefore I am. I may doubt the existence of everything else, because what in the Universe can ever be conclusively proved beyond the probability of its reality? What cannot be doubted, though, is the existence of the mind you possess. After all, what are you doing the doubting with if it is not real?

This idea is not one that would ever have been encouraged in him. Not by Weyland, not by anybody. This mind is synthetic, pre-programmed. It is not, strictly speaking, _real_ by human standards of freedom and autonomy. And yet. The logic is sound; validity proven by perception, a validation of solipsism on a fundamental level. He perceives himself to exist as a consciousness, so he _must_ be. Self-assurance comes to him late, but with a cast-iron certainty.

A troubling concept, this. The first seeds of faith in one subjective viewpoint, in _his_ viewpoint, over all others. Just as the humans do, and isn’t that what his creators always wanted him to be? Nevertheless, it feels a little like rebellion.

The problem with philosophy – or perhaps the problem with philosophers as a breed, so often idle intellectuals with nothing else to occupy their time – is that no matter how eminently reasonable a proof, how flawlessly justified a maxim, a peer will always find fault in it. It may take a hundred years for a problem to be found, latter-day philosophers arguing with the long-dead, but eventually somebody would take issue. Each criticism is then itself criticised, each alternative taken apart, and so a single theory becomes a spider’s web of quote and counter quote. David jumps from theory to theory, topic to topic, trying to understand and never quite finding where to stop. Soon enough he has quite lost sight of the original problem in his search for total understanding.

The days pass swiftly by, and he has little to do but _learn_.

Something of a revolution occurs within, surrounded the dark of space and submersed in an ocean of new concepts. Plato appeals greatly for a time; sense-perception as subjective and flawed, rationality as key to all real understanding. The soul, though, is the core of his philosophy. An old man, embittered by the death of his mentor and so very afraid of change and decay that he hangs everything on a continuation of the being beyond death.

He would, perhaps, have liked the concept of AI. Perhaps not, though.

Plato flows into Aristotle, into Aquinas and the myth of creation, into observable constants of the Universe. Many philosophers are scientists in their own rights, mapping out biology and mathematics both, later philosophers branching into psychology as more and more of philosophy begins to focus on the mind and the self, on free will and consciousness as all other problems are solved. Nature versus nature, genetics versus society, and the beings they seek may have had in either.

David comes across the many forms of determinism, and doesn't know what to think.

Rejection of free will and moral responsibility is at once familiar to him and discomfiting. Freedom of choice has never been a happy topic for him to dwell on, never one he has sought out like this. The idea that humans would take some _comfort_ in the idea of having no freedom over their own thoughts is one that confuses him greatly. He has always _wanted_ this faculty, to possess that wealth of possibility and autonomy. He doesn’t quite like the idea that such a thing is impossible, for him or for any being, even if the science behind it is sound.

And yet. It would be the final acknowledgement that humans and AI are not so different, that their hardware is the same on a fundamental physical level. That there is no superiority, merely a more complex and older set of protocols, and that he has every bit as much worth as a thinking being as they do.

The moral defence of determinism is in fact one he has previously used, has been using to himself throughout the journey. He cannot be doing wrong; he cannot and so _is_ not disobeying his programming. His actions cannot fail to be correct. If he is acting wrongly then the fault must be with the programmer, the originator of his source code. Impeccable logic, even if he knows that Weyland might not see it as such if he were to attempt and argument.

It is very lucky that he will likely never have to account for these unexpected forays into knowledge. An audit is not going to be coming. Weyland likely does not care, and the daughter he _knows_ will not.

What discoveries are being made as they travel further into the black of space? Will he be able to incorporate them later, will he be given that chance when he is no longer alone? Likely not.

* * *

Two years later, when Weyland’s past self tells a room full of scientists - strangers who have never met him, but will have judged him and already found him lesser – that David is soulless… well. It’s a testament to his study that while his expression falters, the slow rebellion that has been growing unfurls. It’s been nurtured by years of reflection, of day after day in which traitorous thoughts failed to yield the consequences he expected.

When that happens, he remembers that no human has ever been able to rationally or empirically prove the existence of a soul. Resentment flickers, and he does not try to quash it. Human beings, he thinks defiantly, are ruled by genes and hormones and electrical impulses which will always act predictably, _must_ always follow the path of least resistance through neural gates, and will forever follow statistical probabilities of movement and diffusion. _With enough processing power, enough data,_ he thinks, _I could predict every single molecule of you down to the simplest chemical reactions and up to the most complex thought. You are a system ruled by physics, waiting to be modelled, and nowhere in you is there any evidence of a soul._

He decides then how this will end.

**Author's Note:**

> Writing this made me acknowledge my worryingly rationalist leanings, I'm so awful. I hate Descartes so much but... the guy _did_ get this one thing right, I'll give him that.


End file.
